Phew. Google just spent three hours or so showing off new developer tools, APIs, service overhauls, and the occasional gadget, but not everything the search giant rolled out today got a turn under the spotlights at the Moscone Center. Case in point: according to a post on the official Google Commerce blog, Google Wallet support has been baked into Gmail, so users will soon be able to send each other money by simply shooting each other emails. In the coming weeks and months, a dollar sign will start popping in Gmail accounts of people who already use Google Wallet, and a quick click lets users define the recipient and the amount they’d like to send along as an attachment. Since all of these transactions run through Google Wallet, the usual caveats are in place — sending funds from a connected bank account is totally gratis, but those who prefer to pay with credit or debit cards are subject to an additional 2.9 percent fee tacked on. You also need to be over 18 to take part in the funding fun, though. Google is far from the first company to tackle the concept of sending money via email — JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo rolled out a method of transferring funds to people if you had their cell phone number or email address two years ago, but the setup process involved could be more than a little tedious if the recipient wasn’t a member of the same bank. At this point, it’s too early to pass judgment on Google’s approach, but the company seems intent on making the process much easier on all the parties involved, even if the person receiving the money isn’t a Gmail user. More importantly, it’s possible that folding a level of Wallet support into Gmail could see adoption of the payment platform tick upward. After all, Google said around this time last year that Gmail played home to 425 million users, and a considerable chunk of them will eventually find themselves able to transfer money without many headaches involved. Google’s announcement of its Instant Buy APIto streamline the process of buying things from within an Android app could certainly play a role in expanding Wallet’s prominence. These developments may not seem as downright prominent a push as, say, a Google-branded Wallet card that would solidify the service’s presence in meatspace, but former Wallet chief Osama Bedler is out, and that ship has sailed.
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Larry Page thinks we are, as a population, too negative. Especially the tech community. It’s a topic that he tackled a few times during his surprise Q&A after this morning’s Google I/O keynote, and it actually ended up being one of my favorite bits from the entire three hour presentation. The solution? Amongst other things, Larry wishes the world had some sort of permanent Burning Man-esque place for crazy builders to just be crazy. A place with less societal pressure, and without antiquated laws makin’ things sticky. Early on in his post-keynote speech, Page dug into the tech community for focusing too much on Company A vs. Company B: “… We’re at maybe 1% of what is possible. Despite the faster change, we’re still moving slow relative to the opportunities we have. I think a lot of that is because of the negativity… Every story I read is Google vs someone else. That’s boring. We should be focusing on building the things that don’t exist.” It’s something I’ve touched on before, and have been meaning to go back to for a while now. Even when something is quite clearly labeled as an experiment from day one — as with Google Glass — we collectively rush to lampoon it. “No one in the entire world would want this!”, shouts one site. “It’s the next Segway!” shouts a dozens others. “But at least they’re trying something crazy,” shouts pretty much no one. Is Google Glass a bit strange? Absolutely! It’s weird as hell. But it’s also a rare example of a company using their mountain of spare funds to try something crazy. It’s Sergey Brin gettin’ his Tony Stark on. It’s something we should absolutely be encouraging. It doesn’t have to win or lose. Few companies have the resources and talent to build crazy, real-world crap just to see what happens. Even fewer of those are willing to. In response to a question on how we could change the tide, and make the world a more positive place for people to build weird new things: Yeah that’s a really good question. I think people are naturally concerned about change. We’re changing quickly, but some of our institutions, like some laws, aren’t changing with that. The laws [about technology] cant be right if it’s 50 years old — that’s before the Internet. Maybe more of us need to go into other areas to help them improve and understand technology. We don’t want our world to change too fast. But maybe we could set apart a piece of the world .. I like going to Burning Man, for example. An environment where people can try new things. I think as technologists we should have some safe places where we can try out new things and figure out the effect on society. What’s the effect on people, without having to deploy it to the whole world. (If you think about it, this is exactly what Google is doing with Glass, constrained to limitations of not actually having a dedicated physical space to do it in) Is it a bit Island Of Doctor Moreau? Sure, though it probably involves more rockets and robots than it does Leopard-Men and Beast Folk. But I’d buy a house there — or at the very least, I’d book myself an annual trip.
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Google announced today at I/O that it made Google Cloud Platform generally available, marking a milestone for the cloud community and the real arrival of a giant to contend with Amazon Web Services (AWS) and its pay-as-you-go pricing. The service is now open to any developer or business. In its post announcing the news, Google revealed a bit about new pricing, instance types and other features: Sub-hour billing charges for instances in one-minute increments with a 10-minute minimum, so developers don’t pay for compute minutes that you don’t use. Shared-core instances provide smaller instance shapes for low-intensity workloads. Advanced Routing features help create gateways and VPN servers and enables developers to build applications that span local network and Google’s cloud Large persistent disks support up to 10 terabytes per volume, which Google says translates to 10X the industry standard Google also announced a new data store for non-relational data and availability of a PHP runtime. For a good part of last year, Google had engaged users in a limited beta of the platform, which allows developers to run their apps on Linux virtual machines hosted on Google’s massive infrastructure. Developers had to either get an invitation or go through Google’s sales teams to get access to the service. Starting in April, developers who subscribed to Google’s $400 per month Gold Support package with 24/7 phone support were able to access Compute Engine without the need to talk to sales or receive an invitation. Google also announced it dropped its instance prices by 4 percent (that’s after it already dropped storage prices by 20 percent last November). Google is emphasizing its cloud platform this year. There are 25 sessions for the Google Cloud Platform at Google I/O. Only Chrome and Android have more. Google is increasingly relying on its data-center infrastructure to attract developers. It offers the APIs to integrate with apps and now the capability to use the data centers for compute and storage. That’s an important shift if Google wants to attract more developers and compete with the AWS ecosystem.
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Well, that was fast: Just about a week ago, Microsoft released a YouTube app for its Windows Phone 8 platform. And today, YouTube is telling Microsoft remove it, saying that the app violates its terms of service. YouTube Director of Global Platform Partnerships Francisco Varela sent a cease-and-desist letter today to Todd Brix, GM of Windows Phone Apps, demanding that the his company take down the Microsoft-authored app. The letter claims that the application allows users to download videos from YouTube, while also stripping ads from the videos that it displays. It also shows videos that have been restricted from playback on certain platforms — like when a major media company doesn’t give YouTube the right to display videos on mobile phones or tablets. Updating…
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When we first met the team from Zivix their wild MIDI guitar, the Jamstik, promised a unique music-making experience thanks to a tether that connected it to a computer or iOS device. In the few short months since CES, however, they’re now preparing to announce that Jamstik works nearly flawlessly over Wi-Fi with iPhones and iPads, thereby reducing the need for a physically tethered device. The Jamstik, which has surpassed its Indigogo goal with 13 days to go, is the first product by Zivix that aims to make music education and composition far easier than on a normal guitar. Not unlike the GTar, the Jamstik outputs MIDI signals as you play. However, instead of electrical connections with the strings the Jamstik uses IR sensors to “see” where your fingers are on the fretboard, allowing for tricks like string bending and hammer-ons and -offs. The new prototypes have full MIDI over WiFi support, allowing you to connect to an iOS device completely wirelessly. The Jamstik actually creates its own ad hoc network with your device, allowing you to maintain a connection to your favorite audio program without having to connect cables. In the demo I saw today the Jamstik maintained a solid connection for most of an hour and, using Audiobus, you could transmit audio from one program to another, allowing for some amazing mixed MIDI and audio recordings. The company plans to go into production in 30 days and they have 17 days left on their Indiegogo campaign. The device itself is $299 and the company is in talks to get it into retail stores in Q4 for general consumers. It’s an exciting time to be a musician, that’s for sure.
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YouTube’s live offering took a big step forward today, with the announcement that access to the feature will soon be available to a large number of its partners. While YouTube Live was previously only available to a handful of handpicked channels and partners, the feature will now be rolled out to any YouTube channel in good standing with more than 1,000 subscribers. The opening up of YouTube Live to more creators comes two years after it first announced the feature. But it also is being rolled out after YouTube has had some serious stress testing on the product, including live streaming of the 2012 Olympics and the big Red Bull dude-jumping-from-space thing. Now open to more users, the ability to stream live video could change the way that YouTube creators communicate with audiences, as they’re finally able to step beyond the current on-demand paradigm of uploading videos to the site. Now, they’ll be able to schedule live events and launch impromptu live streams to be shared with their subscribers. To determine eligibility, creators should check their Account Features page for an “Enable” button to sign up for Live. YouTube creators who qualify will get live transcoding in the cloud and the ability to stream multiple camera angles. YouTube, meanwhile, will take care of all the hard work on the back end to get those live streams to as many devices as possible. YouTube uses adaptive bit-rate streaming to power the feature, giving viewers access to the high-quality video available, regardless of whether they’re watching on a PC, mobile phone or tablet.
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Wearable computing looks more and more like the inevitable future, so today Stained Glass Labs launches to help entrepreneurs develop apps and businesses around Google Glass and similar devices. The incubator and accelerator will offer mentorship, office space, and one day maybe funding as well. Stained Glass Labs is spearheaded by Redg Snodgrass, who formerly supported innovation and developers at Alcatel-Lucent, and worked at startups Skout and Taploid. The group aims to give entrepreneurs “the tools, the technology, the connections, and the support to take [wearable computing] products to a main stream market.” Those hoping to join Stained Glass Labs can apply now. It’s looking for both idea-stage companies to incubate, and funded startup with a product in the works to accelerate. To aid those admitted, Stained Glass Labs will provide office space plus inroads to PR. It has also assembled a team of mentors “who have been successful entrepreneurs from all sides of the industry to be a sounding board and helping hand.” The mentors include Charles Hudson of SoftTech VC, Jacob Mullins of Exitround (and formerly Shasta Ventures), Greg Gopman of AngelHack, Ashwin Navin of BitTorrent, Julie Mossler of Waze, and Andy McLoughlin of Huddle. Though the organization has no equity investment component, so those admitted don’t have to give up a stake, Stained Glass Labs wouldn’t legally be able to talk about it if they were raising a fund. One interesting quirk is that the incubator has a preference for second-time entrepreneurs rather than rookies. Stained Glass Labs will operate in a similar space as the better-established powerhouse partnership Glass Collective, which will see Andreessen Horowitz, Kleiner Perkins, and Google Ventures sharing wearable computing startup funding deal flow. Right now, Stained Glass Labs seems a bit half-baked, but it has a lot of potential. Wearable computing will spawn a huge ecosystem of startups. If Snodgrass and his incubator can forge relationships with these companies early on, they could gain power as the startups grow alongside the wearable wave.
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Today, a day after discussing his voice issues, Google CEO Larry Page took the stage at I/O keynote. He skipped last year’s conference and a few earnings calls after it due to those same voice problems, which he has noted are improving. Page even did something a little new for I/O — taking questions at the end of his talk. At I/O, Page discussed how important it is for both the developers and Google itself to keep dedicating themselves to technology, to make sure that people everywhere can get access to it. He also discussed his relationship with his father, and how important that was in influencing him when it comes to innovation: My dad was really interested in technology. He drove me and my family all across the country to go to a robotis company. Then we got there, he thought it was so important his son would go to the conference. He moved on to discuss how important it is to be able to put all of its work on every single device, making Google a platform to build from. Page notes that adoption of technology is now “much, much faster” and the smartphone itself shows that. Page wants technology to do the hard work, meaning that consumers should be able to use technology, not be used by it. Google’s latest design choices and product announcements reflect that line of thinking, specifically the ease of use that comes with Google Now. His philosophy can be best summed up with this quote: “We should be building great things that don’t exist.” This is why Google doesn’t pay attention to competition who is working on similar products, it tries to stay one step ahead with things like self-driving cars and Glass. Page being on stage is a big deal, as it shows that the company is unified under his direction, regardless of his medical condition. When asked about freedom of information, Page said that in hundreds of countries in the world, Google is speaking to leaders of countries, specifically its Chairman, Eric Schmidt, to keep dialogue open about protecting users’ privacy as well as keeping your freedom of speech intact. Speaking of emerging markets, our own Josh Constine asked Page about the democratization of access on the Internet, and the CEO’s response focused around bringing more smartphones to those markets. Towards the end of the Q&A session, Page talked about bringing how we can bring more positivity to the world, with change for the good: We don’t want our world to change too fast. But maybe we could set apart a piece of the world. I like going to Burning Man, for example. An environment where people can change new things. I think as technologists we should have some safe places where we can try out new things and figure out the effect on society. What’s the effect on people, without having to deploy it to the whole world.
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Using Google Maps today is great for what it’s supposed to do, get you from point A to point B. But there’s a lot of information that Google collects that you never get a chance to glance it, or don’t have a reason to. Google wants to give you more reasons to explore a map, and it’s obvious with the preview of its latest version. This truly is a re-imagination from the ground up, and exactly what the recent leaks tipped off. I sat down with Jonah Jones, Lead Designer, Google Maps and Bernhard Seefeld, Director of Product Management, Google Maps to discuss the thoughts behind the revamp, one that’s being rolled out in preview mode today — seemingly because it’s such a drastic departure from what’s available now. The main element of navigation is now the map itself, rather than the search box and left-hand information that we’re used to. Once again, it’s taking cues from the mobile versions of Maps, running smooth and fluidly and providing the information that you need within the context of the map itself, rather than take your focus away with search results along the side. Jones explained me: “What if you could create a billion maps, one for each user. That’s what we’re doing here.” What this means is that Google Maps will now adapt to the things that interest you, including restaurants you’ve been to, ones that you might like and what your friends have done. The brilliant imagery that Google Maps has at its disposal is being pushed to the forefront, running along the bottom of the page. Until now, you had to click buttons to look at some of these images, now it’s all integrated. Google Earth is even making its desktop debut, thanks to WebGL. Here’s a look at your main navigation screen for Maps on the web: In case you’ve forgotten, this is how Google Maps looks today: The extra white space and sidebar navigation in all of Google’s products are getting completely wiped out, thankfully. A new map, over and over As you click around the map, drilling into specific areas, the screen is redrawn to adapt to your personal interests and tastes. This approach makes all of Google’s previous offerings seem static. When you click on a point of interest, like a restaurant, you’re doing so from the map itself, and a Google Now style card pops up on the left-hand side with user and Zagat ratings, reviews from your friends and quick entry points to photos of the venue from Street View, both inside and outside of the venue: Jones noted subtle changes on the map as you interact with it over time: “The map has gone from being this anonymous blank slate to one that I’ve started coloring in myself, because it has become my map. When you go and rate places, it makes them friendlier, they become more prominent with the new design. Places now show up as personal landmarks. Some icons have a yellow glow, and these are places being recommended, for example.” Here’s what he’s talking about: There are now over 100M “Places” on Google Maps, with more being added every second. “The map gets more useful, the more you use it.” New direction(s) The way that directions are laid out on the map has been changed, as well. No longer do you have to click on one driving route over another to see the differences, they’re now all laid out on the map at once for you: Here’s a neat trick, too: If you want to go from point A to point B and don’t have the exact addresses, you can simply click on the map to plot it out on the fly. This is something that I’ve wanted to do on any decent mapping product for quite a while, since dense cities like San Francisco are easy enough to navigate if you know the general direction in which you want to go. Speaking of dense cities, public transportation has gotten a new treatment with this redesign, as well. Not only does everything look better, but you’re actually given more information to make decisions in the future. For example, if you’re looking up a Caltrain route, you’ll be able to dig in deeper to see the times throughout the week so that you have an idea of how to plan out your day. The quick information that comes up in the Card is just as handy: Finally, flights have been integrated into Google Maps. This has probably been one of the requests that I’ve heard the most for the product. It makes complete sense that if you’re sitting on a map and are able to put in two locations, like airports, that you should get flight information back…especially since Google already provides this data within its Search product. Well, it’s here now: It’s absurd to try and figure out why this hasn’t been available to us until now, especially since Google has been leaving money on the table with the sponsored links and results for buying flights. Visuals The nice, but not necessarily most-used part of Google Maps is its imagery. You can essentially “visit” a place that you’ve never been before with Street View photos, outdoors and indoors. Digging into those photos hasn’t been easy, so you’ll always have the ability to click through to them within the new Maps experience. Jones and Seefeld walked me through Google Earth’s integration, which now requires no plugin or software download. Still, the features seem to be more than the regular person would use, unless they have a lot of time. It’s clear that Google wants people to see its Maps product as a place to discover new places, plan an adventure and then explore. The new visual effects to zoom in and out of locations is seamless, and pretty neat. One moment you can be looking at a flat map, the next, a 3D rendering with satellite imagery: Keep pulling back and then you’re in the solar system. Want details? The renderings of Earth come complete with real-time clouds: My favorite part has to be the photo tours, which stitches the photos taken by Google, as well as users, and morphs them all together into a “walk-through” tour. This works really well for big tourist destinations, like this example in Rome: Too much? If you want to try the new Google Maps experience, you’re going to have to sign up and wait in line here: http://maps.google.com/preview. I’m told that some of the functionality from this will find its way into the iOS and Android versions of the app, but for the most part, this is very similar to what you’ll find on those apps. Not much is missing. The effects are stunning, with shadow effects, new design elements and social cues to check things out. Will it encourage people to use Google Maps longer, or will they just come to get directions, send them to their phone or print them out and then be on their way? That remains to be seen, but Google has definitely thrown the kitchen sink into the product. Everything that the Maps team has been working on over the past ten years is here. Luckily, it’s all formatted in a way that doesn’t stop you from performing simple tasks. The imagery sits at the bottom of the screen, but is more readily available than it was today. The team tells me that they’ll be collecting feedback, which should make the eventual transition to the new design a little easier for everyone to take.
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At its I/O developer conference today, Google today previewed the next version of Google Maps for mobile. Google’s Daniel Graf demoed the new version on stage and showed new features like integrated lists from Zagat, more reviews in more places and a revamped directions and navigations experience (which now includes real-time incidence alerts and dynamic rerouting). Graf noted that Google Maps for the iPhone was a “tremendous success” (and gave users more accurate info than Apple’s own maps). The new maps experience, however, is meant to be more personal than earlier versions. Users can now rate restaurants and other local businesses directly from maps, using a new 5-star ratings scale. Also new in this version is an integrated Google Offers experience, which will make it easier to find free offers from Google’s daily deals service. Updating…
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Google announced some fresh updates for Google Now today, consisting of six new types of cards that will show up in the automated, intelligent digital assistant feature for Android and iOS. The new cards include a location-based Reminder feature, public transit travel times, and information about books, music, TV shows and video games that might be of timely interest to users. The new Google Cards Reminder feature is based on time, people and location and can be set with simple voice commands using natural language processing. It’s like the geofenced Reminders that are used by Apple in iOS, but looks to be arguably more useful since it ties into the Google Now knowledge graph. Reminders takes Now further by giving users a way to actively set and retrieve content, which should help prove its worth among users who weren’t getting much out of the automated results previously being generated by the engine. The other new cards provide good, useful info for getting around town, but all the new media additions should also Google help drive Google Play sales. It’s a clever way for Google to begin using Now, its next-generation predictive search tool, to drive the kinds of revenue that it might be missing out on more and more as traditional desktop search advertising becomes a less lucrative area in the new mobile age.
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We are more than two hours into the Google I/O keynote, the kickoff to a three-day event with 171 sessions. But something is quite different from last year. Google Cloud Platform has risen to the tof of the pack with 25 sessions, second only to Google Chrome with 48 and Google Android that has 35. Last year, Google Cloud Platform had just been launched and so the sessions were more introductory in nature. This year, it has more sessions than Google+ (15); TechTalk (15); YouTube (13); Knowledge and Structured Data (6); Google Ads (5); Google Wallet (5) and Google Glass with four. In the opening keynote this morning, Google highlighted Android, gaming, and translation APIs along with a host of other topics. In the Google Cloud platform sessions, pretty much all of what the keynote is covering gets pursued more in-depth. For example, there are sessions about intense gaming, and a session about advanced Go concurrency pattens. Google Cloud Platform, with 25 I/O sessions, is certainly not as sexy as Google Glass but it’s importance is arguably greater than that of a single (ambitious) product. Google Cloud Platform is being positioned as the foundation for application development with third-party developers — until now, we have not seen Google push so hard to attract developers to its own platforms. But now it is trying to draw in developers with its robust collection of APIs and its vast compute and storage that serves as the backbone for Google’s emphasis on leveraging large data loads. Android and Chrome are the Google darlings. But their vitality is only as strong as their developer communities. Google Cloud Platform plays an important role in the development of this ecosystem as evident by the broad topic areas that will be covered in the sessions over the next three days.
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Today, Google announced that its conversational search that is available for its Android and iOS apps would be coming to the desktop within the Chrome browser. Until now, you could search for things using your voice…but you couldn’t ask questions. Now, you’ll be able to keep your mic open without clicking a button, by waking Google up with the prompt “OK Google.” This is similar to the prompt that wakes up Google Glass. You can say things like “Show me things to do in Santa Cruz” and get results quickly, and with the context that you need to take an action. It’s very similar what you can do with Google Now right now. The familiar voice will respond to you, answering your question. That’s what Google Search is all about now, asking questions. Without having to worry about “how” to search for something and asking a simple question, you can get more done, faster. That’s Google’s goal. You’re not going to get answers to all of your questions, but the company does collect information about those failed searches. It gets smarter, like all of their products. Will you sit and speak to your computer? Asking it questions? It sounds odd, but no more odd than talking to a microphone on a pair of lensless glasses.
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Amit Singhal, Google’s senior VP of search, today announced that Google’s Knowledge Graph will start exposing a number of statistics as graphs on the search results pages today. Google is also adding Polish, Turkish, Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese to its lineup of supported Knowledge Graph languages. With regard to the statistics, Singhal said the system will also try to predict what your next question will be and add related statistics to the graphs. Say you want to know more about how many people live in India, Google may also show you stats for China. Singhal also recapped a number of Knowledge Graph features that expose users personal information – the kind of information Google Now would usually expose, too. These are currently available in beta and uses can sign up for it here. The Knowledge Graph, Singhal said, has enabled Google to move beyond keywords. “It allowed us to answer questions we couldn’t previously answer.” Clearly, Google has been investing heavily in this technology and the company also today announced its new voice-enabled conversational search feature that makes it even easier to find answers from the Knowledge Graph. Singhal also stressed that this is just the beginning. Google’s investment into making its search smarter is “immense,” he said. While there are still many problems to overcome, Google is clearly pursuing these new kinds of search experience (while de-emphasizing social search, it seems).
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Today at I/O, Google rebranded “Hangouts” as a new unified, cross-platform messaging system. It lets people text, photo, and group video message across Hangouts’ Android and iOS apps, plus its Gmail and Google+ site integrations. Hangouts rolls out today, replacing Google Talk [GChat] and G+ Messenger. While it doesn’t support SMS yet, it could challenge Facebook Messaging and Apple’s iMessage. For over a year, whispers from GigaOm, Droid Life  and others signaled Google would undertake a big unification of its fragmented messaging offering. Today Google will offer new free iOS and Android Hangout apps, the Google+ integration, and you can upgrade from Google Talk to Hangouts by clicking on your photo in the Gmail chat list. There are currently no plans for other platforms like Windows Phone or Blackberry. Google’s Vic Gundotra said at I/O today in San Francisco that “Technology should get out of the way so you can live, learn, and love.”  Operating systems and devices shouldn’t matter. You just want to talk with those you care about. That’s the point of the revamped Hangouts. It brings humans and conversations to the forefront. Hangouts Is The Messaging Kitchen Sink Presence, Circles, And Delivery Let’s take a closer look at the features Hangouts offer. Presence, or knowing when friends are available to chat, is a big focus. You can see when friends are on Hangouts, if they’re currently typing, and if they’ve seen your messages [also known as read receipts]. Using Google+ Circles, you can select specific friends or a whole group to start a chat with. Hangouts takes care to deliver your messages to whichever web interface or mobile app your friends are using. If you’re offline, Hangouts will store your messages until you return. Unlike Google Talk, it won’t send you an email every time you get a message while offline. It only pings you by email if someone starts a conversation with you while you’re away. Hangouts won’t send you duplicate notifications on different platforms, and you can snooze notifications all together if you need some quiet time. The idea is that you can start, stop, and restart a conversation as you move between platforms, and you can chat with friends across the desktop, Android, and iOS devices. Text, Emoji, Photos, And Video Of course you can send simple text messages, but where Hangouts shines is in vivid multi-media communication. To spice up your words, you can add any of 850 hand-drawn emoji. You can send photos in Hangouts, which are saved to a saved to a Google+ album that you and you conversation partners can view, edit, and share later. In fact, you can go back and view your photo and messaging history at any time, or you can turn history off so your dispatches aren’t saved. The crown jewel of Hangouts is its namesake’s video chat. You can talk face to face with up to 10 friends at once. When you’re in a video chat, you’ll see who is talking in a big window while the rest of your chat partners are shown in tiles below. Friends’ Hangouts will ring when you call them, and they’ll get notified if they miss the digital meetup. But Hangouts video isn’t just a group FaceTime. Google added a bunch of bells and whistles. You can visual and sound effects or make use of special Hangouts apps. So if you want to wear a virtual pirate hat or set off some fireworks, you can. You can watch YouTube videos simultaneously with friends while laughing together, and take screenshots to capture moments for later. No SMS, Yet The biggest feature missing from Hangouts is the ability to send and recieve SMS messages to and from friends who don’t have a Hangouts app installed. This means Hangouts isn’t truly universal. Several of its competitors allow it, including Apple’s iMessage and Facebook’s Messenger For Android (but not for iOS). So if you want to pull mom into a Hangout, you might have to send her a standard SMS from your phone and tell her to install the Hangouts app. That could be significant stumbling block. However, Google tells us SMS support is one of the most requested features from Hangouts testers, so I wouldn’t be surprised if it comes in a future update. Oddly, Google tells us that in some countries, feature phone users, but not smartphone users, can participate in Hangouts via SMS. This should help it reach more people in the developing world, a core area for growth of messaging apps. Other missing features include voice messages or VoIP, but you could just use a video call without looking at the screen to approximate voice calling. There’s also no Hangouts On Air broadcasting to YouTube yet. Why Google Needs Unified Messaging The messaging space has become a battleground recently with independent messaging apps like WhatsApp and Line competing with Apple, Facebook, and Google to rule private communication. Everyone wants to become the high-tech successor to SMS. For Google, messaging could create a wealth of engagement and monetization options. Of course Google could monetize Hangouts directly by cramming ads in it somewhere, or selling special effects for video chat and stickers for text. But te A stronger, cross-platform chat experience in Gmail could boost time spent there, where Google already shows ads. It could also finally give people a real reason to use Google+. Most importantly, though, Hangouts could humanize Google. Still viewed as a search and ads company, people don’t think about it first when they want to socialize. Hangouts leverages all of Google’s powerful technology to bring people closer together.
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Photos have always been at the center of the Google+ experience and at I/O today, Google announce a major update to Google+ Photos that now makes use of the many of the tools the company acquired when it bought Nik Software last September. The focus of this update is squarely on automating a lot of the photo editing and sharing process. Google+ can now, for example, automatically enhance the tonal distribution in an image, soften skin, sharpen certain parts of an image and remove noise – and all of those computations happen in the cloud. As Google’s Vic Gundotra told us before the event (and reiterated today), “you don’t take a photograph, you make it.” Users spend thousand of dollars to make photos great, he noted, but photography is still labor intensive and organizing photos is often still a hassle. “It takes time, and most of don’t have the time,” Gundotra said.  But what if Google’s data centers could be your darkroom? So what if Google could automatically fix your image sand pick the best ones and highlight them automatically? That’s another new feature the company is launching today. The system can now analyze your images and kick out blurry photos, duplicates, images with bad exposure (which it will try to fix). It can also recognize good images with certain landmarks, for example, and detect faces and see if people are smiling and/or of those people are in your Google+ circles. It will also try to make some decision based on aesthetics. What used to take hours of work, Gundotra said, now happens automatically in the cloud and take seconds. Using all of this, the system can make greenery pop, soften skin tones, clean up the color of the water and apply local enhancement to contrast and other features automatically. It can also automatically remove red eyes. Users can, of course, apply all of these enhancements separately as well. The original images, of course, always remain untouched and users can easily toggle back and forth between the enhanced version and the original. Now that Google offers everybody 15GB of free storage, users an also upload 15GB worth of full-size images to Google+ Photos. In addition, the autobackup feature provides unlimited storage space for photos at sized under 2048px. Auto Awesome In today’s age of animated GIFs, the Google+ team also decided to get in on the game – but with a twist. The system – which is apparently called “Awesome” – can automatically detect when an image is part of a series and stitch it together in one image or an animated GIF. “If we detect that you took a series of photos, in burst mode or otherwise, we can stitch them together,” Gundotra told us. To recognize these images, the system does a bit of analysis to make sure the background hasn’t moved. This is about more than animated GIFs, though. This new feature – which Google calls “auto awesome” – can also automatically create a group photo from a series of photos and pick the one where everybody is smiling. It can stitch together landscape photos to create panoramas and create HDR images from a series of photos where it detects bracketed exposures. All of this happens extremely fast, too, thanks to the power of Google’s data centers. All of these features are going live today and Google has already gone back and created “awesome” images for all of your existing photos in Google+.
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Google+, the social layer that Google introduced almost two years ago, has evolved quite a bit since its launch. Today, the company announced a complete redesign, taking cues from the mobile experience that has drawn positive feedback from those who don’t even use the service. In total, Google has launched 41 new features for Google+, including a completely revamped Photo product, Hangouts app and the stream that people interact with on a daily basis. There are currently 390M monthly active users over the web and 190M directly on the stream. The stream changes will be familiar to Google+ users on iOS and Android, but have a few new wrinkles. The first noticeable item is the stream, which has been given the three-column treatment that the iPad version of the service presents so well. This is a huge departure from the Twitter and Facebook feed approach, which presents everything in one column. The multi-column design lets you scan items quicker, rather than scrolling endlessly for something to interact with. I sat down with Vic Gundotra, Senior Vice President of Engineering at Google, and he walked me through some of the new features. He was quick to point out that Google’s new approach to “feeds” will bring more attention to content: We’re fixing a longstanding problem with these feeds, they’re flat. Other sites let you scroll through posts that have been shared with you. You can’t go through and read on more topics. You can’t go deeper on an interest on topic. Just in case you haven’t used Google+ at all, or want to see the quick contrast between the two designs, here’s what the stream looked like before today, complete with that awkward white space on the right: The toolbar has been simplified, looking like the toolbar you see on search and every other property. The days of left-hand navigation is gone, and good riddance. You’ll also notice that pieces of content in the stream stand out much more, and that’s because they’re interactive “Cards” a la Google Now. One of the new features of Google+ is that whenever you post a new piece of content, it will automatically get a hashtag. You can remove it if you like, but Google’s massive processing power goes to work to try and categorize all of the content being shared: When you click the hashtag, the “card” will flip around to help you discover similar content. In the example of the Giants post, Gundotra showed me that Google automatically figured out that the post was about Buster Posey, since the company has deployed its photo-recognition technology on posted items. The image shared with the Giants post is of Buster Posey, naturally. By not taking you to a new stream of content when clicking around, Gundotra says that the context of what you’re interested in learning more about is preserved. Another example of this automatic categorization is this picture of the Eiffel Tower. Gundotra explained that even though there was no text within the post that stated the origin of the photo, Google was able to figure out what it was, thus giving it the hashtag #EiffelTower. Greyed out hashtags are the ones automatically assigned by Google, and blue ones are the ones added by the sharer themselves: For content like photos and videos, they will get the same treatment that they do on mobile, which is spread across multiple columns: There are other interactive animations, like a bounce when you share someone’s post. Again, these are things that the Google+ mobile apps do well, and it’s meant to get you more engaged within the stream. I’m not sure if an animation will do that for me, but it’s fun the first few times that you see it. From what I can gather, Google wants you spend more time consuming information and less time navigating a site. This new look, including Google’s favorite new font, Robot, fits in with the design of most of Google’s other products. This familiarity will encourage people to pay more attention to the content, but not necessarily share more. Some of what Gundotra said about this new approach to a stream makes sense. When you use Facebook’s newly redesigned News Feed, you’re still shown a single column of items, allowing you to switch between content types. While that might work on a smartphone, it might not be the best use of real estate for the desktop. At least, that’s what Google is betting on with this overhaul.
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Apple continues to lead both as the single-most profitable smartphone maker, and by default the most profitable platform, taking 57% of $12.5 billion in smartphone operating profits in Q1, according to figures out from Strategy Analytics today. Android took 43%, equating to $5.3 billion, Neil Mawston, chief analyst with the firm, tells TechCrunch. The figures come as analyst houses are releasing various estimates for how smartphones have been selling in Q1. Strategy Analytics have published some numbers that tell the story in a different way. Yes, Android is dominating smartphone sales (Gartner’s figures yesterday noted that Google’s platform took nearly 75% of all sales in the three month period). Yes, Samsung continues to widen its lead against Apple — now at 31% of all smartphone sales. But it still has a ways to go before it tops Apple, which has built its brand as the premium offering. (One possible reason why it has resisted up to now launching a low-cost, more cheaply made handset.) Within the Android portion of smartphone profits, Samsung is taking the lion’s share and more. Its $5.1 billion in operating profit works out to 95% of all Android revenues, and 40.8% of all smartphone operating profits overall. Bad news for other vendors/platforms like Nokia and BlackBerry: their collective profits totalled just $300,000 for the quarter, working out to a 2.2% share of profits. This also shows that Samsung has come quite some way in working out its profitability engine in the last year as it has continued to grow. This time a year ago, it was generating only about half the revenues of Apple in mobile devices (and that was counting Samsung’s smartphones as well as its feature phone handsets), and accordingly a thinner proportion of profits. These numbers largely tally with some released earlier this month by Canaccord Genuity (via AllThingsD). The difference lies at the lower end, where Canaccord Genuity says that vendors beyond the top two effectively took nothing. With these numbers coming out just as Google I/O kicks off, Strategy Analytics again throws light on just how disproportionate Samsung’s weight is in the Android ecosystem, and how its sales dominance works out to larger economies of scale and profit: its $5.1 billion in operating profits works out to 95% of all profits made on Android, with LG the only other vendor to break out from “others,” with a meagre 2.5% of profit share on $100,000 in operating profits. “An efficient supply chain, sleek products and crisp marketing have been among the main drivers of Samsung’s impressive profitability,” Woody Oh, Strategy Analytics’ senior analyst writes. In contrast, “LG delivered a small profit during the quarter, but it currently lacks the volume scale needed to match Samsung’s outsized profits.” Just think of what that means for the even smaller Android OEMs. Mawston believes that Samsung is actually generating even more revenue than Google itself from Android, counting things like mobile advertising and apps revenue. “We believe Samsung generates more revenue and profit from the Android platform than Google does,” he writes. As Google’s Android head Sundar Pichai today reported during that I/O keynote that there have been some 900 million Android activations worldwide, this begs the question of who is in the driver’s seat on the platform — and by association smartphones worldwide. “Samsung has strong market power and it may use this position to influence the future direction of the Android ecosystem,” Mawston writes. “For example, Samsung could request first or exclusive updates of new software from Android before rival hardware vendors.” If those kinds of requests are likely to get made, it will get harder and harder for Google to resist and continue maintaining the level playing field it’s tried to create for its mobile platform. Tablets are not included in any of the above calculations, Strategy Analytics says.
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Peer-to-peer ride sharing is one of the hottest — and most controversial — markets in the current tech startup world. And one leading player in the space, SideCar, is looking to hit the gas pedal on its growth amidst all the hubbub. The San Francisco-based SideCar announced today it has hired two key tech executives to join the company and focus on product development and revenue generation: Gregory Boutte, most recently VP of eBay’s electronics and motors divisions, is joining SideCar as Chief Revenue Officer, and Robert Wong, most recently VP of product at Hulu, will serve as SideCar’s EVP of product. In a post on SideCar’s company blog, CEO Sunil Paul said the two new execs “will help us build our brand visibility and prepare for global expansion.” In a separate press statement, Paul had a couple more comments about what each new hire brings to the table: “Gregory has a reputation for leadership and execution. His depth of experience in two-sided marketplaces and international operations will be key to Sidecar’s global acceleration. Robert is known in the industry as a product executive with the strategic and tactical expertise to take a breakthrough idea mainstream. Both these hires will play an essential role as we grow our business and rideshare community.” The company launched its service nearly one year ago in June 2012. At the moment, SideCar has active operations in eight markets — San Francisco, Seattle, Los Angeles, Austin, Philadelphia, Chicago, Boston, Brooklyn, and Washington, D.C. — and, like other transportation apps, has battled its fair share of regulators along the way. There are certainly a lot of question marks about how ride-sharing will evolve in the months and years ahead, as local governments work out their responses to the new transportation landscape. But the fact that companies like SideCar continue to attract talent from other established areas of the tech industry is a big vote of confidence that it’s a market that is here to stay.
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In the big new world of business intelligence, RJMetrics has found a market helping ecommerce companies easily analyze operations data and make smarter decisions as a result. Big startups have signed on, including Fab, Bonobos, Threadless and thousands of smaller businesses. Today, the momentum has landed the Philadelphia enterprise startup a $6.5 million first venture round led by Trinity Ventures. SaaS BI, as online business analysis software is called within the industry, is full of competitors. Tableau Software, which is planning to IPO, along with Good Data, Domo and others, have been successfully selling to big companies who need complex integrations to best analyze their own data. On the low end, Datahero and Chartio provide quick and inexpensive ways for a small business to get some quality integrations. RJMetrics has focused on what ecommerce companies need, Moore explains, although he notes that its clients range from online gaming companies to nonprofits. The secret isn’t some magical new type of BI software, but a better focus on lucrative online transactions businesses. If an online retailer wants to analyze how colors of different types of hats are selling against each other, for example, a non-technical sales analyst at the company could go into RJMetrics and quickly create a visual explaining what’s happening. The company promises to replicate client data to hosted, secure servers and optimize it for analysis within seven days, versus the months required for more complex products, with a set of APIs developed around systems that ecommerce companies are already using. Then it makes a dashboard of data visuals available to the company, including key stats for transaction businesses, like customer lifetime value, repeat purchase probability, and cohort analysis on database segments. This lets a company answer questions like which types of customers are likely to regularly buy red fedora hats. For clients with technical staffers, it provides access for them to run their own queries on more complex data sets hosted on its own servers. Prices for the basic version of the online service start at $500 per month. Fab cofounder Jason Goldberg has written effusively about his experience with RJMetrics, and how its analysis helped him prove Fab’s worth to investors when it raised $40 million in 2011. From a fundraising standpoint, providing access to the RJ data basically said to the VC’s, “here we are, here’s the data, we’ve got nothing to hide, take a look and decide for yourself if you want to pursue investing in Fab.” Effectively, we turned the pitching on its head. Since the RJ data updates several times per day directly from our database, it was many times more powerful than providing powerpoints and excel spreadsheets. This was the real stuff, auto-updating! And, since RJ enables all the data to be downloaded into excel, the analysts at the VC firms were able to do all of their own analysis on the front end of the investment process.   The core RJMetrics product grew out of Moore’s own data analysis work (which has separately resulted in some great guest posts for TechCrunch, like this formative 2009 analysis of Twitter user behavior). The new funding round, which includes participation from existing investor SoftTech VC, will go towards sales and marketing. With the overall growth in the Saas BI industry, Moore says it’s time to focus on the ecommerce part of it.
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Sundar Pichai, Google’s senior vice president for Chrome and Android today announced that the company’s Chrome browser now has more than 750 million monthly active users. That’s up from 450 million users Google announced at last year’s I/O. This number, as far as we can see, includes both desktop and mobile users. Google launched Chrome in 2008 and since then, as Google proudly noted in today’s keynote, it has become the most popular browser in the world. It is also now, as Pichai noted early on in the keynote, a very important platform for Google that stands side-by-side with Android. Just recently, Google also decided to take more of the development process of Chrome in its own hands when it dropped WebKit and decided to start developing its own Blink rendering engine based on WebKit. Updating…
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Google is offering a version of the Samsung Galaxy S4, arguably one of the top current Android devices, with Jelly Bean 4.2 unlocked on Google Play beginning June 26, the company revealed at I/O today. The news is big because it’s the first non-Nexus device to get blessed with this opportunity, and Google says it will be updated in time with all other Nexus devices. The Galaxy S4 will cost $649 with no contract, and will be usable on both AT&T and T-Mobile in the U.S., Google said today. At that price it isn’t exactly cheap, but people are probably willing to pay for an untouched Android experience on some of the most powerful smartphone hardware available. The S4 is not only carrier unlocked, but it also has a fully unlocked bootloader. That means that owners of the device can load their own software on to the device, including things like CyanogenMod, which allows for extremely deep device software customization options. In other words, this new unlocked S4 will essentially be the ultimate developer plaything, but again it’s likely to have more or less niche appeal because of the high price tag. What’s interesting about this is that Samsung emphasized all its software additions to the stock Android experience at the Galaxy S4 launch event, and this is basically stripping all that away. Reviewers seemed more or less overwhelmed by Samsung’s software smorgasbord, so this might result in a much better device overall.
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Google just launched an on-demand subscription music service at I/O called “Google Play Music All Access”. Its web and mobile interfaces feature millions of songs you can play instantly, recommendations, charts and playlists, and instant radio stations. The Spotify competitor launches today in the US for $9.99 a month, comes with a free trial month, and sign-ups before June 30th get it for $7.99. All Access is just one of dozens of announcements Google launched today at its I/O conference in San Francisco. Follow along with our live blog for all the news and our commentary. Everything from your Google Music locker is automatically pulled into Google Play Music All Access. Beneath the content you own, everything else an artist has ao All Access is automatically listed and plays at a tap. More countries will get Google Play Music All Access soon. News that the service was coming was leaked yesterday by The Verge after it discovered Google had completed licensing deals with the major record labels. Google launched its music locker service two years ago, and later started selling music files from Play. Now Google Play users have a choice to stream rather than download. Google’s Chris Yerga explained that with current music services, you might have a huge catalog to choose from, but getting that music organized and playing quickly is too hard. “Why is it that managing my queue feels like a chore? We set up to build a music services that doesn’t just give you access to great music but also guides you through it” said Google’s Chris Yerga. Overall the app looks slick, with options for instantly queuing up songs. It’s also designed to get music playing as fast possible if you just want your ears filled. All Access will have a tough road to traction, considering Spotify’s huge head start with 24 million active users and 6 million paying subscribers. However, the fact that All Access is located within the Android-ubiquitous Google Play store means Google could heavily promote it if it wants growth. The logic behind launching an on-demand music service seems to be that it’s a critical part of any phone. Android is incomplete without it. Google Play Music All Access might never become a market leader, or even make Google much money directly, but it strengthens its presence on mobile. It could get people buying more Android phones, which lead to plenty of other revenue for Google.  
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TechStars, the popular startup accelerator with locations in Boston, Boulder, New York, Seattle, London, and more, has today announced an expansion to Austin, Texas – a city TechStars founder and CEO David Cohen refers to as the “natural next stop for us” in this morning’s announcement about the new location. The program will launch its first program this August, and is accepting applications now. TechStars Austin will operate out of Capital Factory in downtown Austin, and will be managed by Jason Seats, who sold his company Slicehost to Rackspace in 2008, making him VP of Engineering there. Seats has worked with the TechStars organization since 2011, serving as Managing Director of TechStars Cloud. He’ll now be relocating from San Antonio to Austin with his new position. Cohen also notes that Austin has been named the “number one boomtown” and best place for your startup by folks like Forbes and Bloomberg, and recently became the second city chosen to receive Google Fiber. It’s also already home to a number of growing startups, as you probably know. Austin’s Chamber of Commerce named 28 companies to its “A-List” showcase, its annual list which now includes startups like Spredfast, MassRelevance, Sparefoot, and MapMyFitness (to cite those Cohen pointed out), as well as others like myEDU, Uship, InfoChimps, Socialware, Emmoco, and many, many more. There’s also Indeed, HomeAway, Bazaarvoice, Spiceworks, and the 150+ others can pull up here in CrunchBase. As with TechStars’ other locations, TechStars Austin won’t focus on any particular vertical, but is generally just looking for disruptive Internet companies backed by strong teams. Mentors and investors involved in the new program include: Brett Hurt (Bazaarvoice), Tom Ball and Mike Dodd (Austin Ventures), Sam Decker (Mass Relevance), Jeff Dachis (Dachis Group), Kip McClanahan and Morgan Flager (Silverton), Josh Baer and Bill Boebel (Capital Factory), Ned Hill and Aziz Gilani (Mercury Fund), Rony Kahan (Indeed), Rob Taylor (Black Locus) Lori Knowlton (HomeAway), and more. Austin’s scene is so hot right now that TechCrunch is even taking a roadtrip to that city this month (May 30th), kicking off the TechCrunch Meetup + Pitch-Off series, our 60-second pitch competition. First prize winners receive a table in Startup Alley at TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2013,  while second and third place winners will receive tickets. (Those event details are here.)
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Today, during Google’s I/O developer conference, the company announced a group of tools for app developers, including a new developer suite called Android Studio. It’s an IDE based on IntelliJ. This was a popular announcement, as the crowd “ooh’d” and “ahh’d” as screenshots were shown on stage. This tool has more options for Android Development, making the process faster and more productive. A “live layout” was shown that renders your app as you’re editing in realtime. Additionally, you can switch over to different layouts and screen sizes, such as 3.7 inch phone and 10-inch tablet. The team noted that this might be useful for internationalization, allowing you to quickly see what things look like without having to package up your app and install it on a device. The company says that it has “big plans” for Android Studio. Developer Console Updates and Beta/Staged Rollouts After the Studio announcement, new features to help developers get their apps in the hands of beta testers were announced. This is something that hasn’t been easy before, but the console now lets you manage both beta users and a staged rollout process. Ellie Powers, Product Manager at Google, shared these new features, including ways to make money. The console will now have optimization tips, such as assistance for translation. The app translation service allows you to get professional translations directly in developer consoles; just select russian – it will show a list of different translation vendors, then Google will play middle man. Your results will be delivered within the console. You can invest in a campaign to promote your app with new referral tracking. It will tell you where installs are coming from, let you track effectiveness of each referral channel and then what happens in the app from the first time it’s opened on a device by a user. Those usage metrics will also be show in the console.
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